Charlie's Animal Research Project -- status update

[Charlie Wilkes]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:42:01 GMT, "The Puppy Wizard"
<ThePuppyWizard at earthlink.net> wrote:

>HOWEDY Richard,
>
>Those are good suggestions, but will be impossible
>to implement in the same, and perhaps even adjacent
>buildings because DDR permeates the environment
>for at least five hundred feet arHOWEND.
>
>The Puppy Wizard. <} ; ~  )   >
>
Good point.  Will successive blind testing work, i.e., I monitor and
analyze results without knowing which are control?

Charlie
>
>"Richard Vickery" <Richard.Vickery at unsw.edu.au> wrote in message
>news:bhdhk0$li2$1 at tomahawk.unsw.edu.au...
>> Charlie Wilkes wrote:
>>
>> > My experiment design is as follows:
>> >
>> > 1.  I will observe cats under the natural stress conditions of the
>> > shelter and identify specific behaviors indicating stress.  Repetitive
>> > mewing and clawing at the cage are the two that come to mind, but I
>> > haven't started observing yet.
>> >
>> > 2.  I will put the DDR in the cage with some cats who appear uneasy in
>> > captivity and leave it off, and tape a 4-8 hour segment.  I won't be
>> > there physically, which is why I bought the nannycam.
>> >
>> > 3.  I will turn the DDR on, and operate it according to instructions,
>> > and will attempt to videotape as much of the first 24-48 hours as
>> > possible.
>> >
>> > 4.  I will analyze my tape data and attempt to quantify changes in
>> > behavior by counting incidents of behavior that I have determined to
>> > be my stress indicators.
>> >
>> > I'm planning to use subjects who will be in the same area for a few
>> > days and will not interact with them.
>> >
>> > This is ultra-simple, because I don't know anything about doing
>> > research.  So, I'd appreciate comments from all you neuro-wizards out
>> > there in scienceland.
>>
>>
>> Charlie, a few changes would improve the study significantly.
>>
>> 1.  You need some controls - cats in which you put the unit in the
>> cage, but never switch it on, but still record the 24-48 hours as
>> normal.
>>
>> 2.  The study needs to be done blind.  Have the woman at the shelter
>> select which cages will be control and which ones test (flip a coin
>> or use some other random method to choose from your pool of
>> pre-identified subjects).  She should write this down but not reveal
>> it to you until the study is complete.  You now score the tape data
>> without knowing the state of each animal as test or control.  At the
>> end you put your data together with the information about what group
>> each cat was in.
>>
>> Hope this helps.
>>
>> best wishes
>>
>> Richard Vickery
>>
>>
>